Samhi C. – Staff Writer

skc5908@psu.edu

Who is Dr. Tom Noyes? 

For those of you who do not know him or don’t know of him, Dr. Tom Noyes is the program chair of and a professor for the Creative Writing B.F.A program at Penn State Behrend as well as a consulting editor for the Lake Effect, our campus literary magazine. 

He and his wife live in Erie and he has two children, one daughter and one son. His literary works have appeared in several literary magazines and have been published separately as well. He has four books out: “The Substance of Things Hoped For: A Novel” published in 2021 by Slant Books, “Come by Here: A Novella and Stories” published in 2014 by Autumn House Press, “Spooky Action at a Distance and Other Stories” published in 2008 Dufour Editions, and “Behold Faith and Other Stories” published in 2003 also by Dufour Editions. His work has been the finalist for several prizes and he has been awarded grants from The Sustainable Arts Foundation, Erie Arts Council, and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. 

Here is the point where I disclose, for the sake of journalistic integrity, that I have taken three classes with him so far and I am in no way unbiased in my opinion of this man. He is an accomplished writer, an amazing professor, and an even more amazing human being. But do not take my word for it. Read on and decide for yourselves. On Monday, October 31, 2022 at 3:30 p.m. I sat down with Prof. Noyes to learn more about his life and career. And now, I write to pass along everything I learned to our Penn State Behrend community. 

Childhood, Education, and Early Career 

Prof Noyes was born in Philadelphia, PA to a father who was a minister and a mother who was an accountant. He says of his childhood: “We moved around a lot… I have lived in small towns and I have lived in cities.” Even as an adult, he continued to move around for his education and the early part of his career. 

He went to a small liberal arts college, Houghton College, in Upstate NY for four years to earn a B.F.A in Creative Writing then worked in Rochester, NY for a year as a technical and advertising writer as those were the positions people were hiring for in the area at the time. Then for grad school, he attended Wichita State University, Kansas for three years where he earned an M.F.A in Creative Writing.

It was during this time that he was inspired to become a teacher. “I didn’t think I’d want to be a teacher,” Prof Noyes says. “I knew I wanted to be a writer.” But after completing a Teaching Assistantship during grad school, he “kind of fell in love with it and changed [his] thinking from [wanting to be] a journalist.” After this decision was made, he went on to earn a PhD in Creative Writing from Ohio University where he completed another Teaching Assistantship to make himself more marketable as a professor. 

He had a great experience in his PhD program and he’s “still using what [he] learned there in terms of writing and teaching.” Prof Noyes says, “In grad school, I realized writing fiction was my vocation. I realized I wanted to dedicate my life to the art of storytelling.”

What Inspires Him? 

When asked what got him into writing and, specifically, fiction writing, Prof Noyes says, “I always liked stories. I’ve always written stories as soon as I learned to write.” 

Since his parents were avid readers, there would be lots of books at home, so from a very young age written stories were a part of his life. Additionally, he was also an avid TV watcher. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, he loved sitcoms. 

“Saturday morning stuff was always fun.” Specifically, he mentions “Bugs Bunny.” As he grew older, he got into “Saturday Night Live” as well as “Welcome Back, Kotter,” “Taxi,” and other sitcoms. He talks about how he used to envision potential storylines for the characters he saw on screen and used to write his own episodes for fun as short stories. He used humor in his writing which his parents and teachers loved. They encouraged him to keep writing. 

He also discusses how his father being a minister influenced his love of story. From a young age, he interacted with the Bible and he found it to be a literary work unto its own. He believes that the “mystery in religious stories is central to human existence.” Today, one of the courses he teaches at Penn State is a class which studies the Bible as a piece of literature. 

In terms of authors who influenced him, he talks of: 

– Andre Dubus who he discovered in grad school. He says, “Felt like I recognized it… the kind of people I knew… working-class people who had questions about god and love and work.” He says he feels Dubus wrote sophisticatedly and realistically about these kinds of people. 

– James Joyce whose novel “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” Prof Noyes read during undergrad. He also read some of Joyce’s other stories which resonated with him. He says he found that “fiction can be like poetry in terms of attention to diction and syntax and so on.” 

– John Edgar Wideman because the author’s work made him realize “how personal stories can have really big universal themes.” He asserts that he believes the personal is always political. 

– Jayne Anne Phillips because for Prof Noyes, “she writes small, haunting portraits that you can’t shake.” 

– William Faulkner who was an author he discovered later. He says he likes Faulkner’s work because “No one writes sentences like he does. His sentences are just as alive on the page as his characters.” 

Prof Noyes says he finds literature interesting in that “in some ways it builds on itself” as in current writing is always influenced by past writing. “In other ways though… [new writers] are doing something totally new… [They] have to figure it out for themselves.” He says we wouldn’t have contemporary literature without the work of older writers and their work. “It’s just as important that we argue with them and rebel against them as it is that we learn from them.” 

Favorite Authors / Literary Works / Genres 

“Hard to choose just one or two or five or twenty,” is Prof Noyes’s initial response to the question of who are some of his favorite authors and what are some of his favorite literary works. Some works that he loves are William Faulkner’s novel “As I Lay Dying” and some short stories such as Andre

Dubus’s “Killings” and “A Father’s Story” and Joy Williams’s story collection “99 Stories of God”. As for genres, he says he is “drawn to realism… that has a heart to it.” He also loves stories with a “comic edge to them, even if it’s a dark comedy.” 

His Best Works (According to Him) 

Though he has a great appreciation for each of his literary works, of the books he has written, Prof Noyes says his favorites are “The Substance of Things Hoped For: A Novel” and “Come by Here: A Novella and Stories.” 

Of the former, he talks about how it took lots of research and that he has a personal connection to it because it features an ancestor of his. Of the latter, which won the 2013 Autumn House Prize in Fiction and the Independent Press Awards Gold Medal in Short Fiction, he says it takes place in and around the Great Lakes and every section includes some sort of environmental crisis. He feels this work resonated the most with readers, most probably because of the topic. 

COVID Influence on Career 

COVID changed the world. No doubt about it. Even if not everyone got sick, it still affected everyone around the globe in some way or form. Prof. Noyes was no different. He talks about how 2021 being “the worst year in an awful long time to publish” and that it was “tough to market the book.”

 He notes, however, that his publishing team put in their best efforts in which he appreciates. As for the teaching half of his career he recalls how he along with the entire Penn State community “had to go online for a whole semester” in Spring 2020.

 By Fall 2020, when professors were given the choice of in-person versus online classes, he says “I did teach live as much as I could… I needed it to stay sane.” He agrees that in person classes are much more efficient and beneficial when possible. 

Some Tips on Teaching 

For those of you out there who want to be teachers one day like me, this one’s for you. When it comes to teaching itself, Prof Noyes believes that “all methods and modes of teaching have their place.” Personally, he likes to “try to mix it up.” He uses a combination of discussion and lecture. For his fiction writing classes, he had writing workshops to the mix. He also likes utilizing in-class writing exercises to help students who might not be able to find enough time outside of class to write. As for grading practices, he admits that in the beginning he used to use minimal marking which he realized was not the best method. 

He says, “The written comments and the written feedback [is] critical for the class.” He believes it is more effective to give detailed comments on student papers so they can effectively learn and grow in their writing from his grading. He also recognizes that even in a small class, it can be difficult sometimes to give one on one attention to every student during class time. As such, he says detailed written comments are his “way to pay attention to students one on one.” 

Current Works-in-Progress 

Prof Noyes says “I’m always trying to do something… I [currently] have a collection of stories that’s halfway done… and an idea for a novel.” When asked for a preview of the short story collection, he describes the title story, “Goodwill”: ”he says it is about “a writer trying to write his first story, trying to figure out if it’s what he wants to do, if it’s important enough.” The protagonist is a grad student

working part time at a Goodwill store. He said it takes place in the mid-1990s during the O.J. Simpson trial and deals with the concept of race. He describes it as semi-autobiographical. 

One Last Word 

Prof Noyes and I discussed how there are not enough students pursuing writing careers and mutually came to the consensus that even when some students do want to get into writing professionally, they are sometimes dissuaded by the people in their lives who do not see the value in writing and storytelling. There’s a false belief out there that, one, people cannot make money with writing at all, and two, that it doesn’t have much non-monetary value either. Prof Noyes emphasizes that writing is important for the world and for the individual on so many levels. He tells us, “I just wish more people agreed with us.”